


better get real

by patrokla



Category: The Libertines
Genre: Internalized Homophobia, Introspection, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-06
Updated: 2016-02-06
Packaged: 2018-05-18 11:44:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5927146
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/patrokla/pseuds/patrokla
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It should be easy. He can feel his tongue curling around the words as they crowd his mouth, pressing against his teeth.</p>
            </blockquote>





	better get real

**Author's Note:**

> Just a short little thing I wrote a few days ago whilst trying to get back into the ~groove. Title from the Clean Bandit song Dust Clears. Beginning quote from, as it says, The Continuing Adventures of Spaniel O'Spaniel, which can be found in the Poems Questions volume of the Books of Albion.
> 
> Warnings: internalized homophobia (briefly referenced), homophobic slur, dodgy punctuation, no real conclusion.

 

> In his passion, only a passion for life, he would, with deliberation, get the words wrong.
> 
> “I don’t,” - when he did.
> 
> “I will,” - when he clearly won’t.
> 
> \- _The Continuing Adventures of Spaniel O'Spaniel, Peter Doherty_

 

He doesn’t - well, no, he does, but. The simplest way to put it is that he doesn’t, because that way requires no explanation.  
  
So that’s what he’ll say, that he doesn’t. It should be easy. He can feel his tongue curling around the words as they crowd his mouth, pressing against his teeth.  
  
_I don’t want to_  
  
_I don’t want_  
  
Christ, he can’t even think it.  
  
It didn’t used to be like this. Once upon a time, he and Peter were just two foolish boys who thought they knew the whole world and could conquer it too. Once, they’d rolled around on filthy mattresses in abandoned bedsits, shameless as they got each other off and moaned broken curses and fragments of names. Once, before that, Peter had explored Carl’s body with absurdly wide eyes and delicate fingers, pressing stolen verses into Carl’s skin like the hymns he’d never sung as a child. Once, long before that, Carl had flinched away from Peter’s touch and told him in a way that had seemed oh so kind then, that he wasn’t “a queer, not like, y’know,” and then gestured at Peter. Once, Peter had stared at him with hungry eyes and nodded, bitter little laugh caught in his throat as Carl had extolled the virtues of heterosexuality whilst trying not to let his eyes linger too long on Peter’s mouth.  
  
He doesn’t want to go back to that old standby of denial and repression, but he doesn’t know if he can bear the other extreme either. He wants to tell Peter that he loves him, unutterably, but that he just can’t stand to be his lover again. He wants to say that he can’t take the lusting and longing and the inevitable disappointment as he’s let down and left alone again, hurt and humiliated because he wasn’t strong enough to resist the whole of Peter. He wants to want to not want it, any of it, and to be able to say that out loud like it isn’t a lie. He wants to let all of those words march right out of his lips like soldiers going off to war.  
  
Who knows, maybe if he thinks it enough it’ll begin to feel true. For now, he stands in the hotel bathroom, hyper-aware of Peter lying on the bed only one unlocked door away.  
  
_I don’t want..._


End file.
